Help guide

What is the SA National Travel Directory?

The South Africa National Travel Directory (SANTD) is a showcase of South African tourism destinations and services. The project aims to be the most comprehensive and accurate source for tourism listings and TGCSA grading data.

The SANTD allows owners of tourism destinations and services to add their listings or services to the system; these listings are then moderated and published on the global South African Tourism website (www.southafrica.net).

Tourists from all over the world – as well as South African residents – can use this directory to source tourism destinations and services for their travels to and within South Africa.

The primary purpose of the SANTD is to be a free and useful source for the marketing of South African tourism destinations and services, much the same way as the Yellow Pages is a free and useful source of businesses.

Searching listings

In order to find the tourism destination or service you require, follow these easy steps:

This section allows you to search the directory by Listing Type, Region or by Keyword. You can filter using all three of the criteria, or you can choose any combination of them to find what you’re looking for.

For example, if we were looking for all Bed and Breakfast establishments in Mpumalanga, our search selections might look like this:

Once you are satisfied with your search criteria, click the Search button on the right:

The SANTD will search its database and return a list of listings matching the given criteria:

The search will return 10 entries at a time, and you can find more entries by using the pagination tools at the bottom of the list.

If you would like to change your search criteria, the search tool is made available in the sidebar to the right of the search results:

If you already know the name of the tourism destination or service you are searching for, you can use the Keyword field exclusively and the system will return all listings whose title matches your search query, across all provinces and listing categories.

Creating an account

Creating an account on the South Africa National Travel Directory is free and easy. Simply follow the steps below to create your account and add your listings:

Once your account has been created, you will be redirected to an authorization page. This page will ask you grant permission for the South Africa National Travel Directory to access your newly created account. Simply click Yes or wait 5 seconds to be automatically redirected to your dashboard.

Congratulations! You may now add your tourism destinations and services by following these instructions.

Creating a new listing

Process flow

How to:

In order for your tourism destination or service to be showcased on the South Africa National Travel Directory (SANTD), you will need to add it to the database. The way that this is done is by logging in to your SANTD account and clicking Create listing.

Steps:

The first step to creating a new listing on the SANTD will be to fill out
the following fields on the Create listing page:

When adding your listing’s title, the system will search for any possible duplicates that may already exist within the system. If this occurs, please contact the moderator to claim ownership of this listing.

In addition to the listing title, please select one or more Listing types to describe what your listing actually is or offers.

Once you are satisfied with your input, please click the Create button to proceed to the next step

The next page will show and prompt you to fill in some more details about your listing.

There are several key pieces of information that are required for your business to be accepted into the SANTD; these fields are annotated with a red asterisk next to them (eg. *).

If one of these required fields is not filled in, you will receive an error message that looks like this:

You will not be able to submit your listing for moderation until all of these fields have been completed.

The fields that are not required should also be filled out in as much detail as possible, as they will provide
users viewing your listing with more information; however, they are not essential to have your listing listed on the Directory.

Special fields:

Adding categories to your listing:

Click the + button to expand an element to reveal its sub-options

Click the – button to contract an element and hide its sub-options

Click the ☐ checkbox to select an option, and click it again to deselect it

TIP: Select only the most relevant categories for your establishment as it will improve the chances of your listing being found on the Directory.

Adding GPS co-ordinates to your listing:
Use the text box to type in an address or a GPS co-ordinate. The map view will automatically update based on your input. If the geo-location service does not accurately plot your address, you may also drag-and-drop the pin to re-locate it. Please note that this map will only accept addresses or co-ordinates within South Africa.

Adding images to your listing:
To upload an image, click on the Create new button

A dialog box will be displayed which will enable you to upload an image with a caption and then have it added it to your listing.

To upload the image:

Click Choose file

Locate the file on your computer you would like to upload. Only the file types “jpeg”, “png” and “gif” are accepted with a maximum file size of 1MB. Attempting to upload PDF (.pdf) files or Word Documents (.docx) will not work.

Optionally you may add a caption.

Finally, click Create. Once your file has been uploaded to the Directory, the dialog box will close and you can continue editing your listing.

Adding phone numbers to your production:
Phone numbers need to be split by their phone code and the actual number. Please follow the instructions below each phone number field to enter your values correctly.

Adding room details to your listing:
To add details about the number and variety of rooms in your tourism destination, click the Create new button under the Rooms section. This will open a dialog box:
Simply select the Room Type, define the number of rooms (Quantity) and capacity of each room and then click Create.

Once you have filled in all of the listing information, you can perform one of two actions: you can either:

Save the listing for further editing at a later stage by clicking Save Draft, or

Submit the listing for moderation and ultimately for inclusion in the SANTD listing by clicking Submit for approval

Editing a listing

Once you have added a listing to your profile, you may log in and navigate to your dashboard where you will see the following:

All of your created listings will be available in a list in your dashboard, along with their relative statuses, the date on which it was last updated and available actions.

To edit a draft listing (i.e. a listing not yet submitted for moderation), simply click the Edit button to be taken to the listing-editing page.

Once you are satisfied with your listing’s details, you may click the Submit for approval button. Your listing will then be made available for moderators to review and to publish to the SANTD.

Once submitted for approval, your listing will be updated on your dashboard to look like this:

Note the presence of the Pending status of the listing.

Depending on action taken by the moderator, your listing may have one of the following statuses:

Active – your listing has been accepted by moderators and is live to the public on the SANTD

Pending – your listing is pending moderation and will not be displayed on the SANTD

Archived – your listing has been archived and will not be displayed on the SANTD. If you would like your listing re-activated, click “Edit”, update the details and re-submit it for approval.

Draft – your listing has not been submitted for moderation and will not be displayed on the SANTD

Declined – your listing was rejected by the moderators and will not be displayed on the SANTD

Expired – your listing was not modified within the allocated timeframe and will not be displayed on the SANTD

Listing activation

Once a moderator has accepted your listing it will be made active. Congratulations your listing is now live on the South African Tourism website (southafrica.net)!

Visit your dashboard and click the View Live button next to the relevant listing. You will be taken to the direct link on South African Tourism website (southafrica.net) to view your listing (this link can be shared).

Moderation

A number of moderators have been assigned the task of viewing, modifying and accepting listing submissions to the SANTD. If you need to communicate with them with regard to a particular query about your listing, please use the contact details found in the footer.